


a little break in time

by boos



Category: Spider-Gwen (Comics), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: "She's not your MJ. Trust me I've been there.", Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Plothole Fill, pictured: me in the theatre screaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-06 07:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17935388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boos/pseuds/boos
Summary: Gwen wakes up in a world where her best friends fell in love without her.





	a little break in time

**Author's Note:**

> this can def be read as implied romance between gwen and the teen peter and teen mj she knew/knows but NOT between gwen and adult peter or adult mj. if i see any of that i'm kicking you out!!!!
> 
> also also made a [fic tumblr](http://boosfic.tumblr.com/) ;) that i may or may not use ;0 where u can get in contact with me if u would like (it's mostly riverdale stuff on there now lmao sorry)

 

The first time Gwen sees Peter in this new universe she’s stumbled into, she finds herself in Times Square, her body buzzing with this awful sense of _wrongness_ that’s making her gut churn, and it’s all a bit like sensory overload – the lights, the sounds, the colors. 

Even though she’s in the suit, even though she’s in New York, Gwen looks around and knows she’s not where she’s supposed to be. She gazes up at the LED screens wrapped around the buildings and that’s when she sees his face.

He’s blonde and he has stubble in places where Peter used to complain often about not being able to grow a beard, but Gwen recognizes him instantly, her heart lighting up with so much hope she almost chokes on it.

Then she realizes it’s a news broadcast and reads the headline, the words “death” and “Spider-Man” and “secret identity” suddenly jumping out at her, and the first thing she thinks – the clearest thought in her suddenly overwhelmed brain – is ruefully, _I guess there’s not a universe where he lives._

 

 

 

She’s wrong, of course.

The second time Gwen sees Peter, he’s in a Spider-Man suit from only the waist up, and he’s tangled up in the web she spun to catch him and Miles from hitting the forest floor. He’s got these smelly old dad socks on and a hairy belly, and he’s not her Peter but he’s not the Dead Peter she saw on the news either, so she guesses he's from another universe like her.

By the time they properly introduce themselves later, he’s taken the mask off, and underneath is a face that gives her that same feeling seeing the other Peter’s face shining up on the bright screen in Times Square had, that same airy hope that seems to clog her lungs with its force. He has a crooked nose and he’s older than her Peter ever got to be, but he’s got that same brown messy hair she spent weeks staring at the back of in chemistry and his laugh’s the same.

This Peter shakes her hand, formally introduces himself – _Peter B. Parker at your service –_ and before she gets the chance to tell him, _I know, it’s me, Gwen Stacy, your high school best friend,_ his eyes slide right past her without any sort of recognition and he starts directing both her and Miles on what bus they need to catch home.

It feels – not to be over dramatic or anything - but to Gwen it feels a lot like drowning.

 

 

She kind of hates him, Peter B. 

And it’s not just because he doesn’t remember her or seem to know who she is.

It’s because he smells like he’s never known any personal hygiene beside occasionally washing his hands after he goes to the bathroom. It’s because he burps while they’re on the ride back and the bus is so small that Gwen and Miles choke on it. It’s because she sees how easily he can dismiss both her and Miles without a second thought and treat them like they’re just his ticket back home. It’s because he goes into his tragic backstory and as soon as he mentions MJ, Gwen scowls before he can even finish the rest of the sentence.

Peter B. falls asleep soon enough though, leaving Gwen and Miles to their own devices on the bus, yet all Gwen can do is sit there and stew in silence, annoyed and frustrated and so stupidly sad all at once.

But Miles looks back at Peter sleeping, this man twice his age who has a snot bubble forming as he snores, and Miles says with admiration creeping into his voice, “He’s kind of cool, isn’t he?” Then he snickers as he watches Peter’s snot bubble pop and amends, “I mean, _definitely_ not as cool as the Spider-Man I knew growing up, but… he’s cool in a different way.”

Gwen tries not to let her annoyance show on her face as she sighs and says, “He’s sure something.”

“I can hear you guys, you know,” Peter pipes up from the back, cracking one eye open to scrutinize them with his gaze. Before Gwen has time to protest, _Weren’t you just asleep?_ Peter’s rambling his mouth again. “Miles, just because the Peter from your universe had a flourishing love life, boybander hair, and probably a 401k, does _not_ mean he holds a candle to me.”

“You’re a joke, Peter.” Gwen remarks, turning away from both the boys and rummaging in her bag for her earbuds and phone.

Maybe it comes off a little meaner than she intended because Peter just grumbles something to himself after a minute, obviously lacking any sort of comeback, and Miles stares at her with a curious gaze.

“Hey.” He nudges his shoulder against hers. “Everything good?” He asks, looking up at her with a comforting smile like even if everything _isn’t_ good, he’ll try to make it so.

Gwen wants to say so many things, but she knows she wouldn’t even if she knew how to explain it all. “He just gives me bad vibes, that’s all.”

Miles frowns thoughtfully. “I think he’s just… he’s just not what you would expect at first, you know?” He shrugs.

Gwen almost laughs, but she doesn’t. “Tell me about it.” She says, and then slips her earbuds in, leaving Miles to stew on her words.

She kind of hates Peter B. because he’s nothing like he should be, nothing like her Peter, and yet he still has the face. She hates the idea that her dead best friend might have grown up to look like _him,_ and she only got to see it because of a random event of space and time twisting together.

 

 

 

They don’t find a lot of downtime in the few chaotic days they’re all crammed together trying to fix the particle accelerator, but they do have to sleep _sometime_ and May Parker’s house is the best place to hide five inter-dimensional Spider-people. 

Aunt May (who also does not recognize Gwen – of course) had made them dinner out of what she’d had, and what she happened to have was a shelf full of boxed mac and cheese. By the time it turns eight, everyone but Miles and Gwen have finished their bright yellow dinner and retreated to the Peter of this world’s secret backyard bunker to try and make a USB to fix the reactor.

Gwen is too busy scraping the bottom of the mac and cheese pot for the last of the noodles to notice the way Miles is looking at her from across the table. When she does notice, chewing her way through the last of dinner, Miles turns quickly back to gazing around the house with big moon eyes in favor of looking at anything else but her.

Miles is funny that way: he steps around May Parker’s house with these soft careful steps like he’s in a museum and everything from the silverware to the kitchen counter is a piece of art he’s not allowed to touch. She gets it a little bit, she guesses, from seeing the way he looks at Peter B., itching to soak up everything Spider-Man has to teach him. Even though a different Peter once walked through this house, it’s must be all kind of the same to Miles, anyway.

Miles looks back at her all of a sudden with a certain look in his eyes, like he’s finally psyched himself up to be able to ask her this. “Was there –” he starts, but then his voice cracks, and Gwen tries not to smile as he clears his throat and restarts his sentence, “Was there a Peter Parker in your universe?”

Gwen looks down at her plate to avoid his gaze. She nudges the sad noodle shells that have gone cold around the outside with her fork. “Um,” she says and then wonders how much Miles remembers of what she told him about her world, “Yeah.”

She offers up nothing else and Miles, to his credit, stays silent even though she knows he probably has a hundred questions ricocheting around his head. She’s only known Miles for – what, maybe one week? – but she knows he’s good like that. He’s a good listener, absorbs everything you have to say with thoughtful nods and _mhmm_ s, and he doesn’t push, at least not with her.

 _The kid’s got a little crush on you,_ Peter B. had remarked to her in passing earlier in the day, as though it wasn’t obvious to Gwen from the day Miles had stuck his hand on her shoulder and gave the world’s absolute worst attempt at flirting, _It’s cute._

“Was he… Spider-Man?” Miles asks curiously. “I mean, I know _you’re_ Spider-Man – or well, Spider-Woman – but… who was he, then?”

Gwen almost wants to give a bitter laugh. “No. No, he wasn’t Spider-Man. He was just a friend.” Gwen looks up to find Miles staring at her attentively, like he hasn’t got a world to save or a family who's waiting to hear from him or school assignments that are probably stacking up with every class he misses. Just like it’s the most important thing in the world to listen to what she has to say. “He’s – he’s dead, actually. He’s dead in my universe too.” Gwen tells Miles in a burst of blind honesty and the bright, guttural need in that moment to just _tell_ someone.

Miles’ face falls. “Oh,” he says and the sound echoes against the tiles of the kitchen. “I’m sorry.” He offers with the most amount of sympathy he can give to Gwen about a boy he doesn’t know and a past she won’t tell him anything about.

Gwen just shakes her head and smiles at him, hoping to ease the tension on his face. “It’s alright. It brought me here to be with all of you, at least.” She tells him and is surprised at how happy the fact actually makes her.

The last year of her life has felt like a daze, like she might as well have been asleep. Peter’s been dead for longer than she knew him and the distance between her and all her old friends feels like a fucking ocean, and the only thing that gets Gwen up in the morning is the duty to her city and the suit. Beyond that, all her moments and memories feel liquidy, like they might not actually exist if she grasped them tight enough to exam them.

Gwen had been content to live that way because, well, she just hadn’t thought there was any other way to live anymore. It had taken being physically ripped from her string of reality to wake something up inside of her.

“Yeah, that’s true.” Miles smiles at her warmly from the other side, but it’s a smaller kind of smile, like he’s trying to hold back the full force of how he’s feeling. Gwen sighs, endeared, and thinks at the back of her head that she’ll have to talk to him about this little crush sometime before she has to leave.

“You should get back to your dorm.” She tells him, looking at the time on the clock in May’s kitchen.

“Oh yeah.” Miles says, like he’s forgotten he has a life outside of this whole sudden superhero thing. He looks at the clock too and twists his mouth nervously.

Gwen smiles at him. “I promise nothing exciting will happen while you’re gone.”

Miles shrugs sheepishly, a little embarrassed she sees through him so well, and says, “You say that, but just the fact there's a talking pig around makes everything kind of insane all of the time.”

Gwen just laughs as she gets up from the table. “Come on, I’m sure May will give you a ride.”

 

 

  

Gwen barely sleeps.

She gets offered Other Other Peter’s old bed and only says yes once she’s peeked into the room and sees that May’s transformed it into a guest room. It contains the barest trace of any Peter Parker from any universe, just a framed picture of him on top of one of the dressers that Gwen turns face down anyway.

Maybe it’s the constant adrenaline that’s been thrumming in her body since she landed in this world a week ago or maybe it’s the undercurrent of anxiety that’s been there just as long, but she just lays in the bed and looks up at the ceiling for hours, her mind running constantly with half-finished thoughts of this plan they’re trying to do, this universe she’s in and all of its differences, the thought that there was a Peter Parker who spent part of his life in this room and she’s not quite sure he ever had a Gwen Stacy.

The moment the sun peaks through the blinds in the room, Gwen gets out of bed and roams the house for something to do. She expects to have to be quiet, knowing that Peter B. is sleeping on the couch in the living room, but when she tiptoes out there, he’s nowhere in sight.

Gwen’s confused for a full five seconds until she turns the corner in the kitchen and sees him there, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“Hey,” she tries her best to whisper, but it still startles him.

Peter jumps, spilling a little coffee on the counter, and turns his head toward her. “Jeez, my Spider-sense didn’t even go _off_ when you walked in the room. Maybe I really am getting old.” He grumbles to himself.

Gwen doesn’t respond because she hasn’t slept in days and she’s tired of hearing Peter gripe about his age when her Peter never got to live past sixteen. She just takes a mug out of one of the cupboards and slides it toward him; he pours her coffee without having to ask.

She’s pouring in a bit of milk and creamer as he walks toward the living room and says to her, “Come on, let’s go watch the sunrise,” and the next thing Gwen hears is the creaking of the front door.

The sun is just starting to rise above the city's distant silhouette when they settle on the chairs situated on the front porch. The two of them don’t really say anything to the other for a while. Gwen’s just watching the pinks and yellows of the sky and thinking about how they remind her of home when Peter speaks.

“She’s dead in my universe, you know,” he says without much context, and then takes a sip of his coffee. When Gwen says nothing, just looks at him with, _Who?,_ written all over her face, he answers, “Aunt May.” Then he pauses once again and looks away from her. “A lot of people are dead in my universe.” 

For a second, Gwen watches him drink his coffee and thinks to herself, _Is he saying what I think he’s saying?_ She waits for the other shoe to drop, for him to give her _anything_ beside vague possibilities, and when he doesn’t, she tries to shake all those thoughts away from her head. “Yeah,” she says, “Miles told me. I’m sorry.”

Peter shakes his head. “It’s alright, I mean – it happened a little while ago for me. It’s just strange seeing her, living her life in this tiny little house, wondering what could have been.”

Gwen looks down at her cloudy coffee and thinks about whether it’s weird to ask him what she wants to, but then she remembers how fucking _weird_ the fact she’s even sitting with him right now is, and so she asks, “Do you wish that you could stay here? Like, find a way to slot into this Peter’s old life and, you know, reap all the benefits he had?”

She tries to ask this question without giving away too much, because she’s thought about it since she’s been here – finding a world where all her mistakes never happened, where she saved all the people she was supposed to save and got the happy ending she wanted. Just staying there until someone finds her and tells her no.

Peter stays silent for a moment, like he’s really thinking about it, and then he says, “Only if it meant I could be with MJ.”

Gwen can’t help but deflate a little bit. “Right,” she says as she takes a sip of coffee, wondering at the back of her head if he can hear the bitterness in her voice, “It’s always about MJ.”

Peter’s gaze snaps toward her. It’s obvious he’s ruffled at her reaction, but he just shakes his head at her. “If you knew her, you’d understand. She’s like no one else I’ve ever met. She’s like… she’s like the sunrise.” Peter says, eyeing the sky in front of them.

Gwen snorts into her drink. “She’d think that was disgusting and cheesy.” When Peter side-eyes her, his gaze unreadable to her for the first time, she makes sure to add on, “Probably.”

Peter replies, “You know, there was a reason she dated me in the first place. She _liked_ my cheesiness.”

“Yeah, well, I'm sure there’s a reason she divorced you, too.”

“Ouch.”

An awkward silence settles between them. Gwen just stares down at her coffee while Peter sips his and watches the sun rise higher and higher in the sky.

He clears his throat, and when she looks up, he smiles at her warmly, like he’s trying to make peace. “Well, when Miles asks for your hand in marriage before we all go back to our universes, I’ll let him know that he should go all out with it. Be the biggest cheese ball she’s ever seen. You know Gwen, she loves grand gestures. Subtlety's not really her thing.”

Gwen smiles despite herself. “You think that’s funny, but it’s not.” She remarks, but she can’t help but laugh into her coffee at the image in her head of Miles, all of fourteen years old, down on one knee with the biggest diamond she’s ever seen and that serious face he does when he tries to seem older than he actually is.

They sit in silence again after that, but this time there’s no pressure to it or the need to continue conversation. It’s only when the sun is finally at its place in the sky, all of the beautiful pinks and yellows and oranges already evaporated in the sky so the blue of morning can break through, and they hear the rustling of people waking in the house behind them, does Peter look at her in the eyes and say, “I think you’d like her if you knew her. MJ. I think you really would.”

He speaks with a pointedness she hasn’t heard on his voice since they met, and for a moment, he reminds her of the Peter she’d known.

Gwen just smiles across at him, and thinks, _I think I’d like the Mary Jane from any universe._

 

 

 

The gala is all bright lights and people in fancy suits eating fancier dinners than Gwen’s ever had the pleasure to lay her eyes on, but that’s not what they’re here for. They’re here for Fisk and the particle accelerator and – 

“MJ?” She hears Peter’s voice question to her left.

She follows his gaze and sees red hair she would know anywhere, and – oh, no, no, no –

“Hey, pay attention!” Gwen says, trying to pull at Peter’s elbow and drag him toward the rest of the group. “She’s not _your_ MJ, Peter!”

Peter spares her a glance and then looks back at Mary Jane. “I’m sorry, I’ll be right back.” He says, starting toward his kind of ex-wife.

Gwen feels like she’s going to explode. She grabs onto Peter, tries to push him back, “Trust me, I’ve _been_ there before. You have to move on.” She tells him firmly, trying to get his attention.

But her words seem to die before they even get to his ears, and he continues walking without seeming to register anything she’s said. Gwen follows him, of course she does, because somebody has to.

 

 

 

The first time Gwen sees Mary Jane, she’s only been in this universe for a couple hours and the information that this world’s Peter is dead settles as a much heavier weight in Gwen’s chest than she initially thought it did. Peter's death feels inescapable, and Gwen can’t help but wonder, as she spins and jumps through the different alleyways of Brooklyn, if it’s still her fault in this universe.

The news broadcast said he was Spider-Man, she knows, but what if that means their roles had been reversed and _she’d_ been the Lizard in this world and she’d _succeeded_ in her blind rage the way her Peter had failed to do and she’d killed him.

Gwen tries to push down the thought before it’s even fully formed, and the one thing she thinks through the haze of guilt and raw emotion is, _Mary Jane will tell me what happened, Mary Jane will know._

She goes to Mary Jane’s apartment, the one above the Greek shop with the gyros they used to gorge on after band practice, and she lands softly on the cement sidewalk. She looks up at the building and sighs, thinking about the high chance that this is not MJ Watson’s house in this world, but her chest is too heavy and this is her only lead and the world seems so much bigger when it’s not one she knows.

There’s a long black coat that someone’s left hung over a parking meter, and Gwen looks at it with her tongue between her teeth for a moment before she decides to snag it, vowing that she’ll hop downstairs and put it back the moment MJ opens the door and recognizes Gwen.

Gwen fastens all the buttons securely, hiding her suit from plain view, and then she rips her mask off and stuff it into one of the pockets, suddenly grateful for the cold, city air at night.

The building seems a little more dressed up in this world: the Greek place downstairs is instead a frozen yogurt shop with neon lights all over the place and the small door the leads up to the apartments isn’t as shabby or worn out as Gwen always remembers it was.

But it’s still the same door, just painted and polished a little nicer, and so it still bursts open when Gwen hits it with her shoulder at the right force, in the right spot. She takes the carpeted steps two at a time until she gets to the fifth floor, where she pads down the hallway until she gets to number 504.

Gwen steps around the few bouquets of flowers and wrapped chocolates that are piled up around MJ’s door. There’s a framed picture of Peter – the same one that news broadcast used – and Gwen tilts her head at it. MJ and Peter must have been good friends in this universe, she guesses. _That’s good,_ Gwen thinks, _MJ will definitely be able to explain all this to me then._

Gwen steadies herself in front of the door, pulling the black trench coat tighter around herself anxiously and hoping it doesn’t smell. She rolls her shoulders back, raises her fist, and takes an unsteady breath out as she knocks.

There’s a sound of movement from inside like socked feet on wood, and just as Gwen’s mind is spinning with what she’s going to say once Mary Jane opens the door, a woman's voice from behind it goes, “I’m sorry, I’m not accepting visitors right now. If you could just leave any gifts you’ve brought in the hallway, that would be great. Thank you –”

“Oh – I’m, um, I’m looking for Mary Jane Watson.” Gwen smiles encouragingly at the door, knowing she’s being watched from the other side. “I’m an – uh – old friend of hers.”

There’s silence for a moment and then, “I’m sorry, but like I said, I’m not accepting visitors.”

Gwen’s brow furrows. “Do you know where I could find her?” She asks, wondering who must be on the other side. It doesn’t sound like MJ’s mom – although who knows who MJ’s mom could be in this universe – and Gwen highly doubts that MJ’s sister out of all people would be here. “It’s important.”

Then the door opens slowly, like whoever’s behind it is afraid that Gwen’s going to jump at them, and then when it finally reveals this woman with red hair and freckles all over her cheeks and those eyes, those green eyes that Gwen usually sees wrapped in kohl liner, Gwen breathes out an, _Oh._

Even though Gwen had seen the photo of Peter on that giant screen in Times Square and recognized instantly that he was older than any Peter she’d known, Gwen hadn’t quite applied that same logic to MJ for some reason. 

Mary Jane is in a frayed towel robe with pajamas on underneath, her hair is curled at the ends like she’s spent time styling it, and her face – Gwen is struck by the immediate thought that MJ looks so much like her mother at this stage in her life, whatever age she is. Late twenties, maybe. She’s still got freckles, but there are more of them now, layers upon layers of them that have faded over time and huddled on top of each other. Her face is round and smooth, fuller than it was as a teenager, and she has the starting traces of laugh lines around her lips. Gwen’s gaze is momentarily distracted by the movement of MJ wiping her eyes, and that’s when Gwen notices that MJ’s mascara is smudged and her face is blotchy like she’s been crying.

It feels like someone’s just taken a gun and blown Gwen’s mind to bits. It’s like someone has taken everything she knows and just blended it right up until it’s all mush and mush and mush. Gwen doesn’t know how to breathe. Seeing Peter dead again was a shock, but it was – it’s her most poignant memory of Peter. This is an MJ that has lived longer than Gwen has ever thought about.

“Have you got the right Mary Jane?” MJ asks. She sniffles a bit, peering at Gwen as though she’s deemed her less a threat and now more a curiosity. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen you in my life.”

Age and maturity must have calmed Mary Jane over the years. Gwen doesn’t think she’s ever heard MJ say, _I’m sorry,_ more than once in her life, God forbid three times in less than five minutes.

She almost laughs to herself at this thought, but it’s at that moment that everything clicks and the final thread is sewn to tie it all together in Gwen’s mess of a head. _I’ve never seen you in my life._

“Uh,” Gwen drones, her mouth and throat gone suddenly dry, “Guh –” she chokes out, unable to form any sort of coherent thought or want or wish besides, _Please tell me you’re joking._ Mary Jane is complicated and eccentric and, a lot of times, a shit best friend, but she’s loyal to a fault in a soft way that makes Gwen love her ferociously, and she – she wouldn’t do something like this. Gwen can’t imagine a Mary Jane from any universe who would do something like this as a joke.

Mary Jane sighs and leans against the door, a sour and sad look on her face. “Listen, kid, if you are really here for Peter than you should leave. It’s great and all that you want to give your condolences to Spider-Man, but I’m _not_ Spider-Man, and I have a pint of ice cream and a trashy reality show and a life as a widow to get back to, okay?”  

MJ looks exhausted, but she sounds much more like the Mary Jane Gwen knows. Gwen’s about to try and explain herself, maybe, or at least blubber out some tearful, incoherent thought, when MJ grips the door like she’s ready to swing it closed and Gwen notices the golden band on her finger. A wedding ring. Oh my God.

 _And a life as a widow to get back to._ Oh my God.

Gwen looks back at the picture of Peter that someone’s propped up outside the apartment door, and her throat closes up for a million different reasons that she couldn’t even attempt to untangle from each other at that moment, and the only thing she thinks to feel is betrayed, somehow. Betrayed that they grew up without her. That they fell in love. That Gwen’s existence seemingly got cut out of their lives so cleanly and they still had the audacity to find each other and get _married,_ oh my God, they got _married._

Gwen wonders, randomly, if MJ took his last name. The Mary Jane she knows would never.

With tears stinging the corners of her eyes, Gwen looks back up at Mary Jane and tries to smile. “Right. I’m so sorry for bothering you.” She says, barely able to get through the sentence, and then she walks down the hallway without really thinking about where else she’s going to go, just thinking about how she doesn’t want to watch as MJ slams the door in her face.

 

 

 

She makes sure to leave the coat on the parking meter downstairs, and then it only takes an hour of Gwen crying on a random bench in Central Park until her Spider-sense suddenly goes off in her head, clearing her thoughts and telling her where to go.

That's when she finds Miles.

 

 

 

The place where all their universes meet – it’s kind of beautiful.

“You know, I’m older than you,” Gwen tells Miles with a smile in the last moments she has with him in this weird vortex of color where all the worlds seem to start and end.

He just smiles at her, that grin she’s going to miss. “Friends?” He asks, but it’s not a question; it’s an invitation.

“Friends.” She agrees. They share a nod, and this wonderful, distinct feeling that she’ll be back here with Miles someday rises up in Gwen’s chest.

Before she pushes off from the wall the three of them are crowding around and says goodbye for good, she takes a look back at Peter. Peter B. Not her Peter, but still a good guy, someone who she’s decided deserves to have her Peter’s grown up face.

Peter B. smiles down at her encouragingly, but there’s something a little sad about it. She smiles back and nods as a goodbye. Then she propels herself forward, twisting her body around as the gravitational pull takes hold over her and she starts to say, _See you aro–_ when suddenly she stops mid-air because something’s pulling on her wrist, keeping her suspended.

It’s Peter. Peter’s hand is around her wrist, he’s catching her just before she falls, and he’s looking at her face with that sad look he always got when talking about Mary Jane and he’s saying with an odd kind of desperation, odd when directed at her, “Promise me you’ll be safe in your world, alright? I knew a girl like you once –” his voice cuts out, and she’s unsure if it’s from his throat unable to form the words or if it’s from the overwhelming fact of this whole situation “– and I lost her.”

All of a sudden, stuck there, floating in the middle of a vortex with strands of her hair tangling in front of her face, this awful, yet sweet realization dawns on her, and Gwen starts crying. Big fat blobs of tears lift from her eyes and circle around her face, being propelled upward and then being sucked by gravity into the portal where Gwen’s going to follow soon in order to go home. She cries and she laughs and she wants to yell at him, a little frustrated, but at this point more hysterically amused, _Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you let me know?_

Instead, she tells him, “I knew a boy like you once, and I lost him too.” Gwen laughs, but it sounds a little more like a sob, and a few more tears escape her eyes. “He was my best friend.” She says, and Peter’s face crumbles. “MJ’s my best friend, too, in my universe. Or, she used to be at least. A lot of bad things have happened since.”

A grin blossoms onto Peter’s face that is so wide it’s almost blinding with its happiness. He says, laughing a little, “I knew you’d like her if you met,” and then his voice shakes as he says, “You died before she ever came into my life.”

Gwen blinks tears out of her eyes and thinks, _I wouldn’t want to be alive in a world where I don’t know MJ,_ and then she thinks, for all its faults, at least her universe gave her a Mary Jane Watson to grow up with.

The hand on her wrist squeezes in comfort and what must be the weirdest understanding in all history of all the universes – _You look like my dead best friend who I couldn’t save._ Gwen looks at Peter and the Spider-sense in her head tingles like it did when they all met for the first time. Peter laughs, a deep belly laugh, as he feels it too.

And then Peter lets her go. She starts floating backwards, knowing that in just a few moments she’ll be back in her own world. Gwen looks at Peter and then she looks at Miles, and she smiles large, larger than she has in a long time.

“See you around!” She calls to them, and she _knows_ that she’ll see them again soon.

 

 

 

The first time Gwen sees Mary Jane again, she’s been back in her world for maybe ten minutes. Gwen is running down the city sidewalks, dogging in and out of groups of tourists, alight with the sudden need to find MJ when, like kismet or some sort of movie, they _literally_ run into each other on the street. It’s very New York City. 

Gwen knocks into her with a hard _oof_ and they both go down, hitting their asses on the hard concrete. MJ’s spilled the smoothie she was carrying all over both of them and the sidewalk in between, and she looks like she’s about to cuss Gwen out until she looks up and sees who it is.

Out of breath, Gwen smiles and says to her, “I’ve been looking for you.”

 

 

 

The first time Gwen sees Peter again, she brings MJ along with her to the cemetery. 

His grave is not nearly as fancy or decorated as some of the ones around his are. Gwen’s fingers trace along the relief of his name and she remembers how it had cost Aunt May and Uncle Ben almost all of their savings to buy him a plot here and have a service. There are some wilted flowers leaning against his gravestone from when they must have visited him a week or two ago, Gwen guesses.

Gwen places the flowers she has in her hands – a bouquet of lilies Mary Jane had helped her pick out – next to the wilted ones, and then stands up to be next to MJ, who's waiting patiently as Gwen gives her condolences. Gwen snakes her arm thought MJ’s and the two of them stand there in silence for a moment.

MJ kicks dirt with her shoe awkwardly. She’s never been that good with things like this.

Gwen leans her head against MJ’s shoulder and says, with a sigh that’s more content than anything else, “I think you’d have liked him if you’d known him.”

“Is that so?” MJ asks, but there’s a smile in her voice, even if Gwen can’t see it from this angle.

“Yeah,” Gwen tells her, “Definitely.”

They stand like that for a while, until the sun sets on the city and turns to night, the last of pink finally fading from the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> you know a gal really has to stop writing only angst all the time. where are the jokes. this fic is based in a universe where ur just supposed to assume that outside of all of these scenes spider ham is just like chilling and somehow not interrupting miles and gwen with their deep talks in aunt may's kitchen. i know i'm the one who wrote this but where are the jokes


End file.
